Broadstone Wall for the Chop

I just wrote a note to the Luas Cross City Team, thanking them for sending me on the detailed design drawing for the Broadstone tram station.

It is good to see that the upper section of the concrete wall will be removed to give greater visibility of the old Broadstone Station Building. In summary, the upper 1.2 metres of the wall will be removed and replaced with a railing.

The stone cladding appears to be quite thin, and the final finish seems not to be specified. I'm concerned that a smooth, possibly white finish may be a magnet for graffiti.

It is good though  to see that the outline of the former canal will be shown.

I'm hoping that the box hedging would not completely cover the landscaped area, and that it might be possible to have more grass at the upper, and perhaps lower levels

In overall terms I am disappointed that greater emphasis was not put on green infrastructure, as it seems cities such as Bilbao, Freiburg, The Hague and even Rotterdam manage to cover the space between tram tracks with grass, even in their city centres. Here's a photo that I took in Rotterdam last Autumn.

That having been said, I am conscious that my role is not to attempt micro-managing the details at this late stage.

Here's a link to the full drawings for the future landscaping of the old Broadstone Station forecourt if you'd like to take a look.

Reclaim the City - Moving Dublin’s Cycling Plans Forward

Reclaim the City - Moving Dublin’s Cycling Plans Forward - Time for a Radical Rethink?

Dublin Cycling Campaign Annual Lecture 2014. Ciarán Cuffe, Dublin City Councillor, ex Minister of State, and Chair of Dublin City Council Transportation SPC

Introduction

Thanks to Dublin Cycling Campaign and particularly Colm Ryder and Mike McKillen. Thank Dublin City Council for the use of the hall. It is European Mobility Week and the theme is “Our Streets, Our Choice”.

History

I love the city. I like the mix of life; the contrasts the sunlight, the noise and the silence. I like the bell of the Luas, the smell of hops, the sun on the Spire on a winter’s morning. I like the street life, the chance encounters, and the buzz of activity.

All of this takes place in public, in public space, and the way we make, shape and manage this public space is an intensely political act. Public spaces in cities are contested spaces. My politicisation came out of that debate.

In the 1980’s the Council that I now represent was systematically destroying that city in order to save it. I don’t want to dwell on the demolition of communities in order to build dual carriageways, but we must always remember and never forget. It will take generations to undo the damage that was caused to communities in Summerhill, on Clanbrassil Street and elsewhere by Dublin City Council. The transformation of economic hubs into wide roads to facilitate car-based commuters was wrong from the start.

It’s important to realise that the battle over the streets of Dublin was not an isolated one. Around the world the same debates played out in city halls and public meetings over much of the late twentieth century. In New York Robert Moses:

“When you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat axe.”  

In doing this he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City.

While he was doing this Jane Jacobs was arguing for a more sensitive approach to renewal and transportation:

 “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

She wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961, and it never ceases to amaze me how long it took for her ideas to permeate through the corridors of power. Of course we still have urban planning heroes like Jacobs. Jan Gehl the great Danish urbanist was in town a few weeks ago. He said improvements in some areas, such as the much wider footpaths on O’Connell Street, but Dublin was still “dominated” by British traffic planning ideas that gave priority to cars.

NORMALISING CYCLING

The take-away from this evenings talk is that cycling needs to be normalised in all aspects of the city’s life. Little things make a difference. On being elected last June I was given a plethora of forms and instructions, and as I leafed through them I realised that the current narrative is to normalise driving. What’s your registration number? Here’s your car park pass; the Civic Offices car park is open for half an hour after the meeting ends. All these messages reinforce the message that driving is normal, and cycling is, different. That’s where we need to start, we need to normalise cycling.

Why cycle

That’s the urban interest that makes me see cycling as important, but there are lots of other reasons why we should be doing this:

Exercise

There’s been a huge increase in obesity in recent years. 79% of people over the age of fifty are overweight or obese. Cycling regularly can help keep you fit and reduce the risks of obesity, heart disease and mental ill-health for both adults and children.

Climate Change

Cycling has a strong role to play in reducing emissions. The embodied energy in a bike is low compared to a car, and it is a highly efficient way of getting around over short and medium distances.

Poverty

The costs of running a car featured in the media in recent days. The low entry level and running costs of bikes can help tackle poverty. However there are challenges. The €150 guarantee required for DublinBikes is impeding take up in marginalised communities, and needs to be reviewed.

GOOD NEWS

The news is good.  The number of bicycle journeys in Dublin city increased dramatically from 2006 – 2011. The number of bicycle journeys rose by 82 per cent during the five-year period, jumping from 10 million journeys in 2006 to 18 million journeys in 2011. The number of cycling journeys increased from 2.2 per cent to 3.9 per cent of total passenger journeys.  However the national target set down by the National Cycle Policy Framework is for 10 per cent of all trips to be made by bicycle by 2020, and to do that we’ll need 20% of Dublin journeys to be made by bike. That means we have to do more, a lot more. That’s the statistics, the drier side to my talk, but the more interesting issue is the vision, the vision thing as George Bush Senior put it.

Bike to Work Scheme

The Bike to Work Scheme has helped. If tax incentives for buildings were the major surgery approach to urban renewal than tax incentives for bikes are a form of urban acupuncture that relieves stress and makes good things happen. I like the way it has got a lot of middle-aged people back on their bikes that had stopped cycling twenty years previously. The explosion of bike shops nationwide has certainly been prompted by these measures that we introduced in the last Government, but I suspect the last Government will be remembered for other initiatives, as well as this.

Dublin Port Tunnel

This major piece of infrastructure opened in 2007 and made an appreciable difference to traffic safety by taking heavy trucks of city centre streets.

M50

Free flow tolling on the M50 and the addition of an extra lane improved the bypass function of this road infrastructure. However I am concerned that the provision of extra road capacity will encourage car driving, and more worryingly lead to more development further away from Dublin in the periphery.

Recession

I want to be careful how I phrase this one, lest I be accused of favouring prolonged recessions, I don’t, but I do note that the bike is a great way of getting around if you’re strapped for cash, and I suspect the last seven years have encouraged cycling.

30 kph speed limit

We all know about the dramatic improvement in safety resulting from lower speed limits, but just imagine the increased safety if the existing speed limits were enforced. I’ll come back this issue later on, because I don’t feel that the city council can pass this on the Guards as a responsibility. We too have a role to play.

Dublin Bikes

I’m delighted at the success of this municipal bike scheme. Some of you may know that I gave the idea of a Free Bikes scheme a shot back in 1997, but the then City manager said it would never catch on. I applaud the City Council and Cllr. Montague in particular for making this a success. But, I am critical of the reliance on advertising hoardings and sugar drink companies to subsidise the project, it is the equivalent of running cake sales to pay for the running costs of Motorway network, and it is wrong to have to rely on consumerism and sugar to get people around in a health fashion. The sooner we can wean ourselves of these funding sources and receive direct funding from Central Government the better.

Plans, Programmes, Manuals

Finally, we have the guidance, the plans, policies and manuals to make the good stuff happen.  I’m not saying that they’re perfect, but I certainly feel that for many years there was view that more guidance was needed before we could put top quality cycling infrastructure in place. The downside of all of this is that we now realise the weaknesses of much of what was provided in the last twenty years and we have to now go back and revisit them. It’s the painting the ‘Firth of Forth’ Bridge problem. We have the National Cycle Policy Framework, the National Cycling Manual; we have Smarter Travel, and national transport policy that commits us to improving cycling. We also have the Dublin City Council Cycling Action Plan 2010-2015.

BAD NEWS / CHALLENGES

Mission Statements

The Mission Statements reveal a lot about an organisation. I am concerned that the environment has slipped down the priority list on the mission statements from the Department of Transport. I am also concerned about the objectives of the National Roads Authority, and I don’t believe that they mainstream environmental concerns, nor are they referenced in their primary legislation. I’m showing my age here, but I did express concern back in 1993 when the legislation was being debated. It is still a concern.

Plans and decisions of other organisations

I said that we have the plans and programs to deliver sustainable solutions. The problem is that we also have a lot of other plans in the back drawer for unsustainable solutions. These tend to emanate from the NRA, and are approved by An Bord Pleanála

The plans for additional car capacity on the Naas Road are flawed, as is their approval by Bord Pleanála. This will lead to more car traffic from further and further away. The free flowing project at Newlands Cross will drive car commuters from beyond the River Shannon. This is unsustainable and wrong. Why is this an issue for cyclists? Well it is an issue because it will drive demand for car parking and road space in Dublin City. It will increase congestion and the demand for car parking will lead to further urban decay in the city centre and in the North Inner City which I represent.

Does Free-Flowing Car Traffic Reduce Fuel Consumption and Air Pollution? 
In  Cities and Automobile Dependence (1989) Kenworthy and Newman,argue from their worldwide survey of cities that the goal of “free-flowing” traffic (through such strategies as road widening) actually results in MORE fuel consumption and air pollution.

Michael Phillips has said “Whatever transport future the city has will not involve more cars” and yet the City Council in 2010 granted permission for the Dublin Central Development with 700 car parking spaces, right beside a proposed Luas stop. In recent years the Bord recently granted permission to the Kerry Group for a large car based campus on a greenfield site beyond the M50. That may not affect cyclists directly in Dublin’s city centre, but it may affect the choices that parents make in Celbridge on whether or not to let their children cycle to school. We need to plan for consolidation of our cities and towns, and a reduction in car journeys. In many instances this is not happening.

We need joined up policy making and decisions.

The highlighter problem

The gun Lobby in the USA tends to blame shooting sprees on criminals, not on guns. The Road Safety Authority over-emphasises the dangers of cycling and walking, and want us all to wear bright clothing, hi-viz vests and helmets. They appear to be blaming cycle accidents on cyclist and don’t sufficiently acknowledge the role of car and other vehicle drivers. As an organisation it needs to focus on driver behaviour rather than on making cyclists look like a highlighter pen. In commenting on a spike in pedestrian deaths they neglected to place sufficient emphasis on car driver behaviour, particularly as we know that in some instances a majority of car drivers are breaking the speed limit. If we want to encourage people to cycle on country roads they shouldn’t have to look like a lit-up Christmas tree. There is a blind spot to cycling and environmental concerns.

An Garda Síochána

Greater attention needs to be paid to enforcing speed limits and bike theft. Neither are being treated with the attention that they deserve. I have also spoken in the past about Garda Vehicles parking illegally, on bus lanes. This appears to have improved and I welcome this.

City Council

This is where it gets interesting, and I am aware of my responsibilities as the incoming chair of the Transport Strategic Policy Committee on the City Council.  I am also aware that I can’t go it alone and have to gain consensus with both my council colleagues and the officials within the Council to effect change.

I still believe that we focus unduly on the need of car-based commuters in the city. I believe that the introduction of bus and or cycle lanes on the South Quays has been delayed by a perceived need to flush the city of these cars every evening. I question this.

I believe multi-lane one-way streets are city killers. They prioritise the movement of vehicles at the expense of the economic and social life of the city. I believe cyclists should also be allowed travel both ways on way streets as they can in Brussels and other cities.

I believe left turn filter lanes are an abomination in the city centre. They are problematic for cyclists and pedestrians alike and need to be reconsidered and removed wherever possible.

Our traffic signalling needs to be reconsidered. Signals are programmed using SCATS Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System. It tries to find the best phasing (i.e. cycle times, phase splits and offsets) for the current traffic situation (for individual intersections as well as for the whole network). However in doing so it tends to priorities the movement of convoys of cars through the city, a bit like a freight train. This needs to be reconsidered. The length of cycle time is in many cases too long and encourages law-breaking. This needs to be reconsidered.

THE SOLUTIONS

Big Projects and modest interventions

Bruce Katz from Washington’s Brookings Institute stated recently in a talk that he gave at the Dalkey Arts Festival that ‘walkability, cyclability and liveability are the future’.  Walking and cycling certainly make better economic use of valuable city space and should be encouraged for this alone.

To this correctly we need to have the big picture, but we also need to get the small stuff right such as the cycle lanes on the Rosie Hackett Bridge. Whatever happened to the northbound cycle lane on that new bridge? We also need the contra-flow cycle lane that has been planned for upper Camden Street for many years. Contra-flow cycle lanes are important.

A Liffey Boulevard from the Phoenix Park to Dublin bay is long overdue and will be an attraction for Dubliners and tourists alike. Look at how the rejuvenation of the riverside in Bordeaux has transformed that city.

Vision and Ambition

I want to see more civic officials on bikes and less parking underneath this building here on Wood Quay. Let’s have more bikes stands at the civic offices and city hall.

Cycling officer

I want to bring back a Cycling Officer for Dublin. Ciaran Fallon did Trojan work and we need someone who can fly the flag for cycling. That job may include walking, Communication and Education, and if it needs ministerial sanction I will write to Ministers Kelly and Donohoe.

Trialing

Twenty years ago we had a row about giving over one of the two lanes on a two lane road to a Quality Bus Corridor. Today we’re having the same debate about giving one lane of a two lane road to cycling. I suspect history will be on our side. If we’re scared silly of making these changes then let’s do it on a temporary basis. That’s what was done with the Pedestrianisation of Grafton Street back in the 1980s. It was trialled for 6 months and the feedback was good so it was made permanent.

Cost benefit analyses (CBA) attest to the fact that investments in cycling outweigh the costs to a far greater extent than investment in other modes.

We’ve also got to think of the needs vulnerable cyclists such as women, children and migrants, and listen to their concerns when it comes to cycling infrastructure

Conclusions

So, The Radical Re-think?

Interesting times lie ahead and we need to build on the achievements to date. On Dublin City Council I intend reconstituting the public transport and the cycling fora, but I will add pedestrian facilities to terms of reference of the cycling forum.

I will work closely with my colleague Andrew Montague and like-minded elected representatives on all sides of the political divide.

Let your city councillors and officials know how you feel. Don’t forget the Department of Transport consultation on ‘Investing in our transport future” You have four weeks to make a submission. Read the issue papers and get involved.

Let’s choose a city that’s More Jan Gehl and Jane Jacobs,   and less Robert Moses.

Thank You.

Time to rethink the Croppies Acre Park

It’s a tale of two cities.

Actually, the Croppies’ Acre Park and St. Stephen’s Green might as well exist in parallel universes.

During the recent hot spell Stephen’s Green was packed out with people enjoying the sun in a well-maintained and manicured park. Across the River Liffey, beside Collins Barracks the Croppies’ Acre Park was empty, bar a few adventurous city dwellers that had ignored the padlocked gates and hopped over the wall to sit on the grass and enjoy the sunshine. Oddly enough, both parks are managed by the Office of Public Works (OPW). Stephen’s Green is doing fine, but the Croppies’ Acre could do with, well, a little love. 

How did this happen? The OPW blames anti-social behaviour for their decision to close the park. I suspect the problem runs deeper than this. The Croppies’ Acre Park was poorly designed and has been badly managed. It has often run into controversy. Back in 1997 the National Museum wanted to provide a car park for visitors to Collins Barracks, and targeted the park for coach parking. Thankfully the National Graves Association (NGA) and others lobbied hard to stop this from happening. The future of the park seemed safe, but was it? The sculpture that commemorates the Croppy Boys dominates a large section of the Park, and has sterilised much of it. It consists of a stone spiral and flat slabs arranged in a geometric pattern on the grass nearby. The rest of the park has some trees and planting, but has always had been underused and poorly accessible. Even when the park was open to the public, there were only two entrances, close to the Eastern boundary. Along the Luas line a wall restricts access and visibility of the park itself. Tourists walking towards the city centre from Heuston railway station are mystified as to why there’s no entrance to the Park close to one of Ireland’s busiest train stations. The ground may well be ‘sacred’ as Matt Doyle of the NGA described it, but it should be reopened and provide more activities for Dubliners and visitors alike.

Over the years there have been proposals to increase activity in the Park, such as the imaginative proposal by architects Douglas Carson and Rosaleen Crushell  to provide some  5-a-side football pitches, but this was vetoed by the OPW's with their spokesperson Neil Ryan stating that it would be inappropriate, given the site's history as a mass grave. This was a bad call. Parks need activity, and football and monuments can happily co-exist in a park this size. Lots of families and dog-walkers use the small park nearby on Arbour Hill where the 1916 leaders are buried, so why shouldn't the Croppies Acre Park be more accessible and used by the general public? It's almost two hectares or five hectares in size, and thousands of people live nearby. It's also quite a walk, more than eight hundred metres or half a mile  from the Croppies' Acre gate to the nearest patch of grass in the Phoenix Park. For much of the twentieth century the Park was used for football. I'd imagine Wolf Tone's brother Matthew whose remains are said to buried in the Croppies' Acre would have welcomed a bit more activity.

Much of the OPW’s presence in the park over the last few years consisted of a security guard based in a graffiti-covered container who took it on himself to roar at kids who (naturally enough) walked along the parapet of the park wall. Meanwhile (and despite the OPW presence) a certain amount of rough sleeping, drug-taking and street drinking established itself in the Park. At the time of writing in June 2013 we have the worst of both worlds: a park that has been locked by the OPW, plus the anti-social behaviour.

Urban parks are a crucial part of what makes cities tick. They’re central to making urban settlements livable, and fun. They attract families and provide an outdoor space for those who live in small apartments. If we can’t get parks working well, we’re in deep trouble in our cities and towns.

Maybe we can look to the Netherlands to find a solution. Back in March I visited the Noorder Park in North Amsterdam. This park had  previously suffered from anti-social behaviour. Street drinkers had taken over a section of the park and nearby residents and tourists were afraid to visit. Rather than closing down the park the city adopted an innovative approach. They built a small pavilion that acts as an attractive neighbourhood centre. When I visited on a chilly Sunday in March the street drinkers were gathered, cans in hand around an outside fire and inside young mothers sipped herbal tea while their children played nearby. In one corner there was a singer with his guitar with an audience of mixed backgrounds and ages. Nearby an artist was sketching a visitor’s portrait. I was told that the cafe operator was concerned about security for her €5,000 coffee machine, but that the guys outside take it in turn to mind the pavilion overnight. Certainly on my visit there was peaceful co-existence between everybody there.

The crucial factor in all of this though, is that it doesn’t run itself. The City of Amsterdam employs a bright sharp manager who makes sure that the pavilion is well-run and maintained. She makes sure that there are enough old wood pallets to fuel the fire; schedules the singer-songwriter to be there on Sunday afternoon, and liaises with social services if one of the down-and-outs needs care. I wouldn’t be surprised though, if she was paid less than the bored security guard who used to be holed up in the drab security hut in the Croppies’ Acre. Not only does she manage the building, but she is a critical link between social services, the Parks Department, housing agencies and the police. This level of joined-up thinking is exactly what we need in Dublin.  A short video made to mark the fifth anniversary of the park pavilion shows the vitality of the area.

Here in Dublin we need  the same sort of imagination to re-open and improve the Croppies Acre Park. Some thinking outside the box  is required from the Office of Public Works, An Garda Siochána, the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, Dublin City Council and the Department of Social Protection. All these agencies need to move outside their comfort zone. New entrances could be provided, and sections of the wall might be replaced with railings, or lowered in height. A Park Manager should be appointed, and maybe a cafe building provided similar to the one in Amsterdam. This  could lead to a more attractive park, and a brighter future for the down-and-outs, visitors and residents who might use its facilities. It could be a flagship project for social inclusion and regeneration.

The OPW need some fresh thinking when it comes to managing some of their urban parks in Dublin, or perhaps the City Council should take over. I suspect they could both learn from the example of North Amsterdam. I’d be happy to make the introduction.

Liffey Life

The river banks of the River Liffey deserve to be more than just roads for commuter traffic. That's why I'm proposing that we widen footpaths and provide a decent cycle route running between the Phoenix Park and Dublin Bay. 

Here's the text of a talk I gave in October 2012 at a City Intersections event in the Little Museum of Dublin. It probably reads better if you have a look at my PowerPoint presentation  which can be viewed over on SlideShare. I'd welcome your comments.

 It’s not that often that Dublin looks like Tokyo, and that’s probably why I love this shot I took of the Liffey Quays from O’Donovan Rossa Bridge at the bottom of Winetavern Street. The moon was rising in the East, and O’Connell Bridge House, one of Architect Desmond Fitzgerald’s worst mistakes looks almost appealing by moonlight. I was standing close to where the áth cliath or ford of the hurdles was that gave our city – Baile Átha Cliath as Gaeilge.  

Colm Lincoln’s book “Dublin as a work of Art” is really a story about the author’s love for Dublin and specifically the Liffey Quays. He states:

“The Liffey, with its long line of quays, has been central to the development of Dublin. It was to the quays that maritime trade came and the battle over its displacement – as bridge construction shoved port activity relentlessly further downstream – resulted in some of the city’s important characteristics: a sequence of cross-river axes and a long and distinctive river front punctuated by a display of great monumental architecture.”

James Joyces’s Finnegan’s Wake also discusses the Liffey. He flirts with the river from the opening lines to the finish. In a lovely opening line he commences:

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay.”

Of course Eve and Adam’s is the church off Merchant’s Quay, so his book starts near to where  Dublin began, close to where the Scandinavian settlers drew up their long-boats twelve hundred years ago.

Half a million people live in Dublin, almost two million dwell in its functional urban region or “travel to work area”. I want to focus on the inner city, between the Phoenix Park and Dublin Bay. I believe that the Quays have been neglected and that radical action is needed to restore the Liffey Corridor to a state that we can be proud of that allows it to function as the front room of the city, and the nation.

Dublin Bay is a crucial part of the image of the city. It’s not as accessible as it should be: the Port, the sewage plants, the power plants, the dumps all act as barriers. They conspire to block us from welcoming the sea into the city. When we talk about the city we need to talk about the old city and the inner city. Twenty five years ago the centre of Dublin was hemorrhaging its population and the inner city’s population was down to 65,000 people. The blunt instrument of tax incentives introduced in 1986 helped reverse this trend and thankfully the city centre population grew dramatically through the nineties and noughties.

If the Bay is the bookend to the east the Park is the bookend to the west. Again, the relationship to the city is flawed. The city car pound was once located at the crucial meeting point of the Park and the city. Now it’s the Criminal Courts. That’s not the perfect civic building, but it is a new landmark that marks the transition from green leaves to brown brick. The River is the unifying link, and I suggest that a few improvements in linkages, places and spaces along or close to the river could improve the image of the city and our sense of civic pride. I also believe that we need a Liffey Boulevard on the Quays to make it easier and more pleasant to walk and cycle between the Park and the Bay.

I’ll start at the Phoenix Park, the fionn uisce or clear waters of the royal deer park that celebrates a 350the anniversary in 2012. I’ll work downstream across Diageo Land, and The Gut before finishing close to the Hotel that Pigeon sisters ran for cross-channel ferry passengers in the early Nineteenth century.

Dublin’s changed a lot in the last twenty years, and not just in terms of the built environment. 

Many of those who come to Ireland for work or education have settled close to the Liffey Quays. Polish, Nigerian and Chinese voices are common on Dublin streets.

Fionn Uisce

The Phoenix Park is the People’s Park of Dublin. It is well used in every season. In recent years car parking seems to have encroached more on the park, despite attempts by the Office of Public Works to curtail through traffic. I love this view of Dublin from the Magazine Fort, with domes and spires in the distance. The trees have grown since the Eighteenth century, but the city and the river can still be glimpsed through the trees.

The Magazine Fort can be the start or the end of the Liffey Boulevard.  It’s a neglected empty monument and could happily accommodate a bike shop, café, museum or other activities. It apparently even contained a bakery during the emergency. The complex deserves to be reused and more closely linked to the city. It could even have a pedestrian and cycle link across to Lutyens’ War Memorial Gardens in Islandbridge.

Diageo Land

Back in the early 1980’s when I started studying architecture in UCD we undertook a fantastic project across all five years of the course studying the Liffey Quays, and produced a book edited by Gerry Cahill that contained our proposals. One of the projects was for a new public Square at Heuston. In some sense that has come about, with the restoration of Dr. Steven’s Hospital as the HSE Headquarters and the Luas stop outside the rail Station. In Parisian terms it’s more Place de la Concorde than Place des Vosges because of the traffic, but it works.

I look at this view from my bedroom, and will never grow tired of it. It is stunning in all weathers. The Liffey lies just below and it never ceases to amaze. One morning I looked down and saw ten footballs in the mud, just beside Seán Heuston Bridge that carries the Luas beside the station. In the Netherlands about 40% of train passengers arrive by bicycle and a large multi-storey bike park is provided outside the main railway station. I feel we should copy their example, and provide the same in the Liffey outside Heuston.

The brightest signs on the Quays tell us how many car parking spaces are available. Personally I’d prefer to know more about the weather or cultural events, or not have the sign there at all in an age of smart phones and in car navigation systems.

Funny things happen on Wolfe Tone Quay. Here’s a shot I took in October 20111. The river is on the right, the Quays on the left.  The Civil Defence depot is also on the left, and their entrance was blocked by the floods. The following day the Quays were magically silent as engineers inspected the damage. The crack in the quay wall restricted traffic by one lane for several months afterwards. There may have been some traffic delays and increase in Luas passengers, but I guess what it showed was that we can take a lane of car traffic off the Quays without the economic life of the City grinding to a halt, and that’s probably a good thing.

Let’s get back to Diageo. Don’t get me started on Arthur’s Day. I’m fond of a drink myself, put painting the town black? Here’s a view looking across the Thames at the Tate Modern, a fantastic conversion of an old power generation station into a modern art gallery. Here’s a view looking across the Liffey at the Guinness steam plant. Well, you can guess the rest.  Ideally I’d like to get visitors out of the Guinness Store House, into the Tate Modern, Dublin, and then allow them to walk gently downhill and across the new footbridge across the Liffey and the Croppy Acre past the Luas stop and into the Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks. It’s the total tourism experience: St. James’s Gate, the Tate and Irish history in one afternoon, plus a Luas to take you back to your hotel.

Scooter Island

Scooter Island or Ushers’ Island has seen better days. Sure, it’s got a Calatrava Bridge, but where doesn’t at this stage? The river frontage could do with more than a facelift. Here’s Moira House that was the Dublin home of the Earls of Moira. Had it survived the twentieth century it would have celebrated its 260th anniversary this year but it was demolished in the 1950s. The gate piers remain. We can do better than this. St. Pauls on Arran Quay graced the cover of the UK Architectural Review in 1973. The cover said “Thainig an A.R. go dtí Baile Athá Cliath.” Inside Brown and Wright argued:

“Without question it is the quays which give topographical coherence to Dublin. They are the frontispiece to the city and the nation: grand yet human in scale, varied yet orderly, they present a picture of a satisfactory city community: it is as though two ranks of people were lined up, mildly varying in their gifts, appearance and fortune, but happily agreed on basic values.”

Thankfully the road plans drawn up by the London consultants didn’t get the green light, but most of the Georgian buildings were lost and replaced by Zoe pastiche.

This view of the TOP Petrol Station is the “Chuaigh an A.R. as Baile Athá Cliath” shot. If you look across the river from St. Pauls you see this:, a monument to the first phase of urban renewal tax incentives from the 1980s. For a time it even graced the cover of a Dublin Corporation brochure urging you to invest in Dublin. It would be fair to say it hasn’t aged well.

The footpaths along the quays are often microscopic in width. However a wider footpath and bike path would still allow for a car lane and a bus lane to be placed on Arran Quay. It is time to reallocate road space. Ironically the City Council seems to have the budget to completely repave vast swathes of footpath at the moment, but appears not to be widening footpaths.

There’s a pleasant widening of the Quays at the junction of Arran Quay and Church Street. Road engineers have grabbed the space to fit in more traffic, but perhaps a small plaza could be provided. Apologies for the graphics, I failed my Photoshop class, but I suspect you get the gist of it.  Further along the Quays the magnificent setting of the Four Courts deserves a wider footpath on the river side of the Quays, as well as besides the building itself.

There’s a problem in how we manage and plan public space. Architects often restrict themselves to individual buildings. Planners fret about the relationship of buildings to each other. However the most important job of all – planning the space between buildings – is left to road engineers who often simply don’t have the training to mediate between the different functions that this space must perform. They all-to-often strive to maximise the traffic carrying function of the space, not realising that the economic and social functions of public space are equally important.

Now that I’m on a roll about civil engineering I need to mention left-turn filter lanes. I’ve counted about eighty of them between the canals and they all need to be removed. They destroy the public space of the city, converting meeting places to highways. If you maximise the traffic carrying capacity of a road the vehicles will speed up as they round the corner and economic life and social interaction will lose out. 

All the these right-turn filter lanes have to go, and  let’s start with the ones along the Quays. Then we can slowly but surely reclaim the street.

It can take you three pedestrian light phases to cross the junction at Christchurch. That is wrong. I want to narrow the road so that it becomes a civic meeting space rather than a traffic junction. Even on New Year’s Eve the Gardaí hustle you off the road once the bells have struck twelve. I want to narrow the carriageways so that tourist and Dubliners can feel that the city is their own. People are more important than cars. Here’s how the Architectural Review saw Christchurch back in 1973. I wouldn’t copy that, but I think we need to reduce the traffic carrying-capacity of these junctions so that people’s voices can be heard.

O’Connell

I was never a fan of Charlie Haughey, but I do credit him with saving Temple Bar. I sat in a crowded CIE Hall back during some 1980s election campaign when Charlie had the wit and conviction to say that Temple Bar would be saved. That didn’t stop the rise of the super-pub, but at least many of the buildings and streets were saved and many of the cultural uses that grew up there are housed in well-designed new premises. Another rogue, Mick Wallace was responsible for the Quartier Bloom off Ormond Quay, a charming part of Dublin where Italian is the second language. I like the locks on the Ha’penny Bridge. I’ve no doubt that some official will remove them, but they’re a bit of fun that adds to the interest of passing over the Liffey.

College Green is oozing with potential, has some spectacular buildings, but is currently a traffic nightmare. The first thing I’d like to do though is take a chainsaw to the ungainly trees that are blocking the views of the Old Bank of Lords (now the Bank of Ireland) and the front of Trinity College.

The next step is to replicate what has been done in many London Square in recent years. Restrict the car traffic and liberate the pedestrian. Then we can all breathe again.

Often Roman towns had two main roads at right angles to each other; the Decumanus and the Cardo. If the route from Parnell Square down O’Connell Street and through College Green and Grafton Street to Steven’s Green is our Decumanus than the Quays must surely be our Cardo.  O’Connell Street Bridge currently seems to have at least eight, or possibly nine lanes of traffic running across it. It deserves to be a civic space. Let’s tame the traffic, perhaps down to four lanes and give space to the pedestrian in this important civic space.

Given that the city doesn’t cherish O’Connell Street Bridge it is no surprise that O’Connell Bridge House sports a large alcohol ad. Once as I walked down the boardwalk and English weekend tourist stopped his mates to shout. “It’s a pub and it’s ten floors high”. Whatever about our English visitors we clearly have an alcohol problem, an image problem and a public space problem.

I’m interested in our definitions of public space and place. In Irish law I can only find references to public spaces in the road traffic acts, and public spaces in the criminal justice legislation. Curiously in the road traffic acts a public space is somewhere that you can have access to with your car. That speaks volumes about our relationship to the city.

The junction beside Liberty Hall is particularly poorly designed. The combination of cattle barrier-style pedestrian enclosures and indecipherable road signs requires some long hard soul-searching by the city fathers and mothers.  It could be better.

I took a photo of Bachelors’ Walk on the North Quays on St. Patrick Day, fully pedestrianised for, maybe an hour and a half. Why not do this once a month on a Sunday afternoon so that we can look again at our city rather than rush through it.

Aldo Rossi the late Italian architect and urbanist said:

“The city is the locus of our collective memory… There is something in the nature of urban artifacts that renders them very similar – and not only metaphorically – to a work of art.”

Works of art deserve to be treated with respect.

The Gut

The Gut refers to the stretch of water where the Grand Canal and the River Dodder enter the sea. The development in Dublin’s Docklands over the last twenty years has led to significant civic improvements. The walkways and cycle lanes along the campshires as the Quays are referred to East of Matt Talbot Bridge are a magical change in how we view and use the waterside. Last summer I there were kayaks for rent and my ten year-old son and I had a wonderful adventure paddling between the Beckett Bridge and the Jeanie Johnston Tall Ship. We saw the city from a whole new angle.

Fergal McCarthy’s temporary island installation was great addition to this stretch of the River. It made people laugh, smile and rethink their perception of the space between the Quay walls. I want more of these. Back in 1982 my brother-in-law Brian Vahey a stage designer also placed a temporary island in the River Liffey. His was a wooden pyramid with mementos of the old Theatre Royal inside. He moored it near Burgh Quay close to Hawkins House which replaced the Theatre. That was one of my first introductions to the River as I acted as caretaker for his island, waiting for the drunken shouts once the pubs had closed.

Sir John Rogerson’s Quays grinds to a sudden halt on the South Quays just before the Gut. There have been various proposals to bridge the Gut over the years. I would like to see a simple structure for pedestrian and cyclists that would link the city to the bay. Once this happens, the new walkway and cycleway that I’m proposing on Liffey corridor would inevitably find its way down to the Pigeon House chimneys, close to where the Pigeon Sisters ran their hotel back in the 1800s. A final stop might be the remnants of an old fortification, close to where the infill of the bay has created a new beach. Reflecting the Magazine Fort the wall could be adapted to house a tea rooms, visitor centre or other activities. Pedestrians could continue down the Great South Wall to where the city meets the Bay.

A few years ago I published an earlier version of this proposal as part of a Green Party cycle plan for Dublin. Many of the ideas were included in that proposal.

Now what? Well, it’s a good time to be talking about the Liffey Corridor. The Dublin Bikes scheme is set to expand towards the end of 2012, and that means that something must be done with the Liffey Quays to make them more pedestrian and cycle friendly. Perhaps the Tate Dublin and bridging the Gut will never happen, but it’s part of debate that’s worth having. 

There’s an argument to be had as to whether a cycle lane should be beside the quay wall, or closer to the building edge. Should there be one wide cycle lane on one quay or a lane on both quays? Should the traffic flow on the Quays be reversed again, or made two-way? Multi-lane one-way streets are bad for the life of the city. Would a lower 30kph speed limit obviate the need for a separate cycle lane in the first instance? Perhaps. Certainly wider footpaths would make our Quays more livable, and create enjoyable places.

In the meantime I’m hoping that these ideas will contribute to the debate. Let's end with a line from Joyce:

"Whish! A gull. Far calls. Coming, far! End here."